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Daily Archive: June 29, 2013

This June 25, 2013 file photo shows representatives from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund standing outside the Supreme Court in Washington awaiting a decision in Shelby County v. Holder, a voting rights case in Alabama. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) by Suzanne Gamboa WASHINGTON (AP) — Take a glance at the anniversary calendar this year and it’s clear that in America, racial progress comes in fits and starts. The Emancipation Proclamation declared slaves to be free 150 years ago. Within a decade, a trio of amendments to the Constitution made them citizens. Over the next century, the Supreme Court and Jim Crow segregation in the South snatched their rights away, Medgar Evers was murdered trying to get them back, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s populist protests yielded laws that restored them before King, too, was killed.

RAYNARD JACKSON (NNPA)—With the deepening polarization of our country, I have been reflecting on the cause of this polarization. One of the major issues confronting the U.S. is what it means to be an American. This may sound a bit trite, but this is at the heart of a lot of the intractable problems we are facing as a country. Everyone wants to carve out their own identity, with individuality being the motivating force behind the move, not the betterment of America.

ALEXANDER HERRING The past two years have been a difficult time for Westinghouse 6-12, a restructured Homewood school that spent a brief period as a single-gender academy. The beleaguered school saw four principals in the last four years and several administrative changes since it was reopened as a new school in 2011. Now, the school will see one more change. On June 17, Alexander Herring, a former principal from Erie, took the helm at Westinghouse.